I don’t know if this blog may continue, almost nobody come to see  it except my classmates. But after the class is finished I think even my classmates will no longer come here. So my words will be meaningless.

Well I will say something about the course. WRA course is so good and helpful. It is really impressed. I still remember the first class. The teacher Ryan talked a lot and it seemed that he was so happy. My classmates were all happy and they talked with each other quite often. It was such a good class, the only problem was that I cannot understand anything that they said. This course was totally different from the others. The other classes are all big and the classes are more like lectures. Teachers talk slow and officially, and I can follow the teachers easily. But in WRA it is like a meeting, teacher talks with students and It is really hard for me to follow them. After the first project the other Chinese student in the class dropped the course. He talked with me and he suggested me to drop the class just like him. At that time the WRA was really hard for me, it took me almost 15 hours to finish a paper and I still had to go to the Writing Center to find some help. But I think this is a good course and both the teacher and the students are friendly. I believe I can finish it. So I didnot drop it and now I have already finish it.

This course really taught me a lot. It let me know what is American education and how American people write things. It is the key that lead me to the whole American study life. Ryan is so kind that he explained to me what is citation and helped me a lot with writing stuff.

At last, I want to say: thank you WRA.

Now I am busy with the final exams. In fact I am not so busy as my roommate and the other American classmates. In China, I used to go to library to study everyday after class and almost every weekend as well. I did the same thing here. So even though I have to review 4 courses together with a final project now, it is not so tough for me to do it. The American guys really become mad these days. They study day and night and several days ago I went to library and to my surprise there were plenty of American people there. This was the first time that the library was filled with American guys.

In fact such thing did happen when I was in China, it was more horrible in China. During the final weeks I had to wake up at about 5 a.m. and then go to the library to get learning spots for me and my girlfriend, or there would be no room left. Many people even fight for a learning spot… It was really horrible.

However, the different thing is Chinese people take the exams more seriously than American people, at least I feel so. For example this Thursday there were still many parties and my roommate even went back home. Normally in China at this time all the students would do nothing but study and all the parties and events would stop before the final week. Everyone then took the finals as the most important thing during that period of time.

There are some reasons for the differences. First of all we Chinese grade system is different, the grade of a course is always depends only on the final exam, so it makes the finals more important. Secondly Chinese students always take the exams as the most important thing for a student to do.

Well I will go to the library now.

In fact the other four projects are also like this. A topic that can not be wider and under the huge topic students can choose whatever they want. I did not realize it until the project 4. The teacher let us to remix our project 1, which is about the personal literacy to a new version like a video and then show it to the whole class. Then I found out that everyone’s project is so interesting and they are all totally different. Personal experience is so interesting and we all enjoy the project.

However when I was in China no such thing happened. we did have assignments but they were all the same. Like an essay, the topic of an essay would be so narrow that almost everyone wrote the samething. Instead of the topic like personal literacy here, the topic in China would be something like: what do you think of responsibility, or the most unforgettable thing happened in your life. It was really boring and everyone’s essay looked the same.

I think this is why Chinese students are always good at solving problems which do exists, just like a question in an exam. But always failure to find out problems in daily life. What we learnt in class is only used for exams. That sucks.

It embrassed me a lot that because of my mistake all the other members get a relatively low score. It makes me think about what is teamwork. Everyone of the team has the responsbility for the others and personal mistake is no longer a mistake and will have an effect on all the other members. Like this time, I cannot understand exactly what citation is and I think I can just take others’ words from the internet. Even though Ryan had explained to me what citation is, I think citation should only be used when writing a academic essay, but not a newsletter like this. However I am totally wrong. I am in a team and I should ask others if I am not sure about something. But I didn’t. I just thought I was right and then did it in my own way. That should not be forgiven.

I feel so sorry about my teammates. They believe in me… What I did must frustrated them.

I went to Chicago on Thursday last week and I stayed there for 3 days. I went back last night. First day we went to Chicago, checked in the hotel and walked around. At 11 o’clock we went to a big outlets near Chicago. We had no idea about the thanksgiving sale and even we thought we were the early ones who would get there until we arrived. There were so many people and cars and it was really hard for us to even get out of the highway. Later we parked our car outside and then walked to the outlets. Popular brands such as Juicy Cultural, GAP, DIESEL, Adidas and so on were filled with people and there were long lines outside the stores. We didn’t have much time so I just bought a outwear and my friends bought jeans then we left there.

In China there are also sales. But not like the sale here, there is no such a day that all the brands came out to be on sale. Every shop has its own sale day and there might be no reason for a sale.

Later we went to the museums and the Navy Peir. They were all interesting. The last day we went to the michigan avenue which was really beautiful.

I don’t think the big city here is better than the ones in China. I am from a big city in China and I think it is better than Chicago. It is clean and beautiful and there are malls, restaurants and many other things in it. It is comfortable to live in and the environment is also beautiful. There are not many differences between the big cities in China and America.

In China, small town is small town. Small town always means undeveloped and bad. There will always be farmers there. There are always no good schools. Life is really tough there. It can be so hard to buy the necessities for life, for there might even be no supermarkets. There may be small shops but one will never be able to find any big malls in small towns in China. People are always not friendly and the environment will always be terrible.

In America, towns and big cities are two ways of life. But the quantity of life keep the same. However, in China, few people like to live in small towns. Life there is really hard.

I have discussed in my earlier blog that it is really easy to change major here. It took me only five minutes to finish the thing which may take one month or even longer to do in China. There are advisors here. They will ask what are you really interested in and help you select the major. Also there are courses that like Intro to the whole major.

This semester I selected a course called BE101. At the very beginning I thought this course would suck. It is only one credit and there are almost no technical knowledge but just introduction. However later I found out that I was totally wrong. It is true that this course is not as hard as the cauculus courses. But it is really useful and it really told me what BE is and what a BE graduate student will do in the future. Although at the end I decided to change my major, I still consider this course so important.

In China, no such thing happens. Teachers and parents help students make all the decision. It is horrible. Few students can learn the things they are really interested in.

When I changed my major, I thought it would be many paper works. However, It just took me five minutes and only one form to fill out. When I was in China, If I want to change my major, tons of stuff should be done and It would take at least a month to finish all the paper work. Also, only few people who did great in their exams were able to change the major.

Why such thing exists in China? I think it is because China has a large number of population. The main purpose for most of the students to go into a university is to find a job. So in China whether a  major is good or not depends on if the graduate students are easy to find a job, but not  the students’ interesting. So there is so-called good major and bad major in China. Which is different from the things here.

Maybe it is because that the way Chinese and American people eat food are different. American people prefer to eat simple food, which is only fried or baked. In China, the way of making food is far more complicated than the way in America. Also Amercian people prefer to eat cold things sometimes but in China only few kinds of food are eaten cold and they can never be the main dish. So it is reasonable that one cannot accept both kinds of food at the same time.

It is really lots of fun and kids were all enjoy the games the whole day. Every team have their own T-shirts and some of them dress customs. There is a DJ there and he kept making the atmosphere lively. it is not only a competition but also a party. And it is the holders who try their best to make this competition like a party. Some of the teams really didn’t finish missions successfully but all of them got medals and awards. I thought about when I was in China things were totally different. We did have competitions like this but usually the atmosphere there was so serious. And it is the holders who tried their best to make the competition serious. Also one team will be the champion and then the leaders would speak highly of the winners and let the other teams know exactly that they were losers. I don’t think such kind of competitions in China are good for kids.